“This yearâ€šÃ„Ã´s special contribution to the canon may be the argument that the moment has arrived for a battle that looks to most of the population like a battle among peers, which in a sense it is: the rich versus the rich, the meritocrats versus the meritocrats, the ambitious versus the ambitious. But it also pits two highly distinct groups, the merely rich and the superrich.”

“Envy may be a sin in some books, but it is a powerful driving force in Silicon Valley, where technical achievements are admired but financial payoffs are the ultimate form of recognition. And now that the YouTube purchase has amplified talk of a second dot-com boom, many high-tech entrepreneurs â€šÃ„Ã® successful and not so successful â€šÃ„Ã® are examining their lives as measured against upstarts who have made it bigger.”